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JOUISSANCE & THE SEXUAL REALITY OF THE (TWO) UNCONSCIOUS Gustavo Restivo PhD 2013 JOUISSANCE & THE SEXUAL REALITY OF THE (TWO) UNCONSCIOUS Gustavo Restivo A thesis submitted to The Auckland University of Technology In fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Faculty of Design & Creative Technologies 2013 3 Table of Contents i. List of Figures 7 ii. Attestation of Authorship 8 iii. Acknowledgement 9 iv. Abstract 10 v. Preface: Situated Encounters 13 v.i Original Engagement 13 v.ii My Trajectory in the Field 15 v.iii Jouissance and the Sexual Reality of the Unconscious 17 1. Rationale and Significance of the Study: Jouissance & the Real 19 1.1 Agency of the Research 20 1.2 A Freudian Account of the History of Sexuality 22 1.3 Lacan’s Main Theses on Sexuality 24 1.4 Logic and the Phallus 26 1.5 The Process of Sexuation 28 1.6 Feminine Jouissance and the Mystics 34 1.7 Saint Teresa’s Holy Ecstasy 35 1.8 Hadewijch of Anvers 36 1.9 Tiresias 38 1.10 Incompleteness and Inconsistency 39 1.11 Towards an Original Contribution 40 2. Epistemology and Methodology: Knowledge & Truth 41 2.1 Psychoanalytic Epistemology 42 4 2.2 Knowledge and Truth 43 2.3 Heidegger, Lacan and Badiou on Truth 45 2.4 Psychoanalysis and Science 49 2.5 Aristotle’s Account of the Four Types of Causes 56 2.6 Psychoanalytic Research 61 3. Historical Literature Review: Après-Coup 63 3.1 Retroactivity of Historical Review 65 3.2 Freud’s Three Essays 66 3.3 Infantile Sexuality, Etiology of Neurosis and Freudian Myths 71 3.4 Lacan’s Clinical and Critical Innovations 72 3.5 The Mirror Stage 74 3.6 The Phallic Function 77 3.7 Scholars Influenced by Lacan’s Theories on Sexuality 79 3.8 Attempts to Overcome Binary Views on Sexual Identity 84 3.9 An Original Contribution of this Thesis 88 4. The Father’s Function: Metaphor of the Name 91 4.1 Lacan’s Conception of the Oedipus Complex 92 4.2 The Father and the Case of Little Hans 96 4.3 The Oedipus Complex is a Freudian Dream 99 4.4 The Real, Imaginary and Symbolic Father 101 4.5 The Father and the Name-of-the-Father 102 4.6 Societies Without a Father 103 4.7 The Paternal Metaphor 106 4.8 The Cartesian Cogito and Ontological Arguments 110 4.9 The Father and Jouissance 113 5. Thesis of the Two Unconscious: Lalangue & the Trace of Jouissance 116 5 5.1 The Three Metaphors 117 5.2 The Borromean Knot 119 5.3 Real Subjects 122 5.4 The Real Unconscious 124 5.5 Lalangue 127 5.6 Effects and Affects 131 5.7 The Two Unconscious 136 6. Sexual Partners: Truth of the Real’s Command 139 6.1 The Drives 140 6.2 Sexual Signification of the Symptom 142 6.3 The Fundamental Symptom 144 6.4 Sexual Partners: an Impossible Encounter 146 6.5 There is no Sexual Relationship: the Symptom & the One 149 7. Partner/Symptom/Sinthome: Autistic Jouissance of the Pure Letter 154 7.1 The Autistic or Socializing Solution 154 7.2 The Sinthome 156 7.3 Partner-Letter 160 7.4 James Joyce, the Sinthôme 163 7.5 Fernando Pessoa, Mentality Joui-sens 166 8. Conclusion: Love Transference & the Real Unconscious 170 8.1 Beyond the Symptomatic / Sinthomatic Solution 170 8.2 The Non-Success of the Unconscious is Love 179 8.3 Final Remarks 186 9. References 189 6 List of Figures Figure 1. Lacan’s Formulae of Sexuation 29 Figure 2. Partial Reproduction of the Ecstasy of Saint Teresa 36 Figure 3. Moebius Strip 56 Figure 4. The Borromean Knot 119 Figure 5. The Fourth Knot: The Sinthome 121 Figure 6. Algorithm of the Transference 122 Figure 7. Jouissance and the Borromean Knot 176 7 Attestation of Authorship I hereby declare that this submission is my own work and that, to the best of my knowledge and belief, it contains no material previously published or written by another person (except where explicitly defined in the acknowledgements), nor material which to a substantial extent has been submitted for the award of any degree or diploma of a university or other institution of higher learning 8 Acknowledgements The idea for this PhD grew out of discussion and encouragement from my colleagues in the Centre for Lacanian Analysis, and the New Zealand Forum, in Auckland, and especially from Mark Jackson, a foundational member of the CLA, who subsequently took the role of Primary Supervisor. Along with my thoughts to my CLA colleagues, I also express my gratitude to Sonia Alberti, who encouraged me to engage with the Freudian Field of psychoanalysis and the Lacanian Orientation at large, and who took the role of Second Supervisor. Both Mark and Sonia have been an immense source of inspiration, providing at the same time critical response to my research. I would also like to extend my acknowledgement to Dany Nobus and to Leonardo Rodriguez, who were my Second Supervisors in the first and second years of research. On the personal side, I would like to express my acknowledgement and love to my children, Fernando and Florencia, and to my partner, Gloriana Bartoli, who patiently supported me throughout the time of the thesis. 9 Abstract _____________________________________________________________________________________ Abstract The reality of the unconscious is sexual reality – an untenable truth. Jacques Lacan The topic of jouissance and the sexual reality of the unconscious has been a key concern of mine from my initial years of practicing psychoanalysis in both its clinical and critical frameworks. For my PhD research, this work is significantly developed within the Freudian Field of Psychoanalysis and the Lacanian Orientation and explores, as a starting point, a broad body of literature, historical and contemporary, concerning sexual identity, jouissance and the sexual reality of the unconscious. The literature review highlights that despite considerations given to overcoming dichotomies in sexual difference there are issues unveiled in late Lacanian teaching that remain only partially addressed. Within the mainstream of Lacanian psychoanalysis, the concepts of jouissance and the sexual reality of the unconscious are generally explained in terms of the possible rapport between the subject and the concepts of the phallus, the name-of-the- father and the symptom. In contradistinction, the quilting point around everything else is organized as the phenomenon of jouissance. Regarding jouissance, sexual difference is addressed, following Lacan’s formula of sexuation, by a theory based on the 10 Abstract _____________________________________________________________________________________ difference between the all-phallic jouissance, on the side of the Man, and the not-all- phallic jouissance, on the side of the Woman. This PhD research particularly engages the different types of jouissance discussed by Lacan, specifically jouissance other than phallic jouissance, and their effects in the subject, as perceived in our clinical practice, mediated by language and by lalangue. Further to that, this research closely engages the late Lacanian thesis of the two unconscious. One reference is to the imaginary or transference-unconscious, the one that is deciphered in analysis and that implies fantasy and desire as supports of the subject’s being, the unconscious related to language and the drives. Then there is the real unconscious, linked to Lacan’s neologisms as speaking-being and lalangue. Since the unconscious has been defined as being a reality which is sexual, the two unconscious allow for a different approach to the question of the difference of the sexes. The description of the sexes in terms of symbolic constructs, as in gender studies, is clearly and paradoxically anchored in the transference-unconscious, which is in the imaginary power of language to distinguish between the anatomical sexes. Moving from Lacan’s formula “There is no sexual relationship” this work discusses Lacan’s formula, “Jouissance is not a sign of love,” emphasizing from clinical work that jouissance and love get knotted. This leads to a reflection on the thesis of Partner-Symptom and Partner-Sinthome. Given that there is no sexual relationship, the symptom or the sinthome could achieve a possible union between the discrete elements of the unconscious and jouissance. Therefore symptoms/sinthomes are placed as a substitute and become no longer the problem but the solution. The research concludes with the concept of love. Lacan underlined that an aim of psychoanalytic discourse was to produce the passage from semblance to the real, from love to jouissance. Psychoanalysis erases, then, the difference between transference and normal love, the “There is no sexual relation” assumes the status of the Real. For speaking-beings love serves as a crutch of the sexual relation. Consequently, Lacan’s central determination of the relation between love and sexuality states that love supplements the sexual relation. Regarding the relation between the real unconscious 11 Abstract _____________________________________________________________________________________ and the transference-unconscious, this research refers to the equivocal title of Lacan’s Seminar XXIV, L’insu que sait de l’unebévue s’aile à mourre, which could be read as L’insuccès de l’Unbewusste, c’est l’amour—the non-success of the unconscious is love— engaging with the question: which unconscious and which love? And, indeed, this PhD research sheds some light on how jouissance establishes the sexual reality of the (two) unconscious. 12 Preface ____________________________________________________________________________________ Preface Situated Encounters With this Preface I present my original engagements with the Freudian Field of Psychoanalysis at large and with the Lacanian Orientation in particular. I then identify and outline the topic of this research: Jouissance and the Sexual Reality of the (Two) Unconscious, including some insistent questions from my practice that acted as a motivating force and a source of inspiration for me to pursue this work.
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